Local SEO 2017: How To Rank Your Local Business

Local SEO 2017: How To Rank Your Local Business

Every day more and more people are looking for local businesses online, specifically on the Google search engine, and even more so on mobile devices. It’s important to make sure your business is visible on these platforms, and that’s what our local SEO services can do for your business. Local SEO is a lot different from your average SEO campaign, and the local search results are changing more rapidly than any other. Over the past five-plus years, the digital marketing world has seen an influx of Local Search SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platforms emerge with different value propositions for brands with physical store locations.

As competition for organic results continue to grow, winning over local search queries offers the best shot companies have at getting their web properties in front of the right audience. Local search has clear synergy with mobile search and voice search. Google’s recent pigeon update has more than demonstrated their commitment to this aspect.

Those in the industry know that the very way SEO is described has changed. SEO has now become almost synonymous with content marketing. As search engines place more emphasis on social media indicators and high quality content SEO no longer stands on its own anymore. Some agencies hire content marketers and social media managers to produce content to be handed off to SEO experts for optimization. Instead, content should be created with SEO in mind from the very beginning. We predict that it will become increasingly important for content and social media marketers to have an understanding of search without reliance on SEO experts.

All you need to know:

All you need to know is that once you’ve set it up, you should include the following:

Add a long, unique description that’s formatted correctly and includes links. Choose the correct categories for your business. Upload as many photos as possible. Add a local phone number to your listing. Add your business address that’s consistent with that on your website and local directories. Upload a high-resolution profile image and cover photo. Add your opening times/days (if relevant). Get real reviews from customers (I’ll come onto this).

Make sure you have a physical address in the town you are targeting. The same, consistent physical address across your profiles will help optimize your local presence.

Utilize Google My Business because, well, Google loves itself. Anything you do well on Google will help your rankings. Google has increased the importance of GMB, so any information you add on Google Search, Google Maps and Google+ is beneficial.

Include a map to your location. People want to know precise locations, and a map is a visual way to tell them exactly where you’re located. You can add the code to add a map to your premises on your contact page.

Don’t forget to include other useful details that will help people choose your business. These include store hours, driving directions, phone call links and social media links. Google will recognize this information and boost your rankings, too.

Your website should include helpful, informative content. Google puts a lot of emphasis on high quality content and will penalize websites without it. To avoid being penalized, your organic SEO plays a big part in your rankings.

Encourage website reviews from your customers. People read reviews, as this information helps them make informed choices. Google also takes reviews seriously because they indicate that a business is legit and will benefit users.

Optimize your inbound links which can come from other businesses, webinars, community events and more. Inbound links tell Google that you are an authority and have a good reputation as a local business.

Incorporate the right keywords into your content. Think about the types of keywords that your customers will be searching for, and use them in your content. This way, when people search for keywords related to your business, they’ll be more likely to find yours.

If you have multiple branches or locations, create their own separate web pages. You should optimize the websites with the location they are located in to help drive more traffic from that particular area.

Another way to optimize your local SEO is to have specific web pages for your individual products and services. Add distinct details about them and add links for authoritative value.

The importance of local SEO will only continue to grow as searching becomes a more personalized process. Adopting local SEO techniques sooner rather than later can give you a leg up on your competitors and improve your company’s bottom line.